246 Summer's Afterglow 



the music of the song-thrush singing in the midst 

 of the gold. Yet this whole world of beauty may 

 be banished, to return no more till the cycle of a 

 whole year is completed, by a single night of storm. 

 Bright as is the sunshine for a few hours, it streams 

 aslant from a path so low in the heavens that a 

 mounting earth-fog can eclipse it swiftly and with- 

 out warning ; brilliantly as all the foliage gleams, 

 it depends for its continuance upon the absolute 

 calmness of the skies. Even the flood of music, 

 that seems at first to fill the air with all the fullness 

 of spring, is the song of a single bird, or of two 

 chanting in rivalry over the voidness of the autumn 

 fields. Instead of the abundant flowers which 

 filled these fields and hedge-banks in summer, there 

 is only the pale shimmer of the mayweed blossoms 

 on the land waiting for the plough, or some lonely 

 thistle-head which sets a last stain of dying purple 

 against the brown stems and bleaching grasses of 

 the pasture-side. When we see how scanty are 

 the remnants of true summer vitality, and how 

 ephemeral is the tenure of this brilliance, the 

 fascination of the sunlit landscape is enhanced by 

 the sense of an ethereal and almost gossamer-like 

 delicacy. The splendour of the broad-limbed elms 

 is scarcely more substantial than the thin mists 

 of noon, which give a softer tinge to the sunshine 

 on their burnished crowns ; and where the sapling 

 poplars show a crest of stainless yellow over naked 

 boughs, their colour seems to float above the earth 

 like a flame that trembles to expire. 



In the heart of all the brilliance of St. Martin's 



